I need you so much closer
by pondglorious
Summary: In which Alana does stay that night with Will. Picks up from the scene in Fromage and follows through the rest of the season as if that'd happened, exploring the aftermath of it.


"I wouldn't be good for you, you wouldn't be good for me, and I wouldn't be able to stop analyzing because I have this professional curiosity about you-"

Alana's protests are stifled again by Will's lips and she, regretfully, lets him. He imagines she had a pendulum of her own that erases his mind of savagery and makes him good and clean and clear again, and he starts to think of ridiculous things like _thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged_. But this was not Shakespeare and his bookshelves are scarce a copy of Romeo and Juliet for a reason.

The kiss is shrouded in everything their life is; tragedy, turmoil, yearning. It was like their lips were meeting on opposite sides of a veil, impossible to tear or tarnish, suffocating them, separating them.

All she wants is to wrap him up and protect him from all the brutality the world was throwing at him, but all she can do is hold him right now, so she lets his lips consume her words of protest. For a moment caring for him encompasses caring for herself, caring for the consequences of her decisions, and that terrifies her.

It terrifies her because it makes her feel so out of control. She likes things organized. She liked to file her feelings into boxes and keep them neat and clean and orderly. She couldn't help project the scrutiny meant for her patients inward, and it caused for a need to be in control, of her actions, of her emotions. But this- falling for him- was never something she could control.

Because she'd fallen for him before she even realized the possibility. And he broke her heart far before he even had possession of it. Staying away won't mend the cracks.

He was kissing her like she was a life raft, something that could keep him from drowning in the depths of the insanity of it all, while in reality he was just pulling her down under with him. That was terrifying, too, because she could pretend for a moment that she didn't care what would happen when they finally sunk.

And it was all just yet more terror, terror, terror. Because what if it wasn't worth drowning? And, a notion so much more alarming- what if it was?

The conflicting thoughts were pressing in, until the sentences became fragments and the fragments became syllables and the syllables drifted up, away, out of her head and into the oblivion.

Maybe that was the reason. Or maybe it was because she could feel his hot breath against her cheek as she spoke, mouth pressed against her skin, and he smells like soap and coffee and firewood and something else she can't quite place, just that it's homey and pleasant and _him,_ and she wants to show him how wrong everyone else is- that he's not just his empathic gift but so much more, and she's been shackled to her logic and morals for so long and _so long_ seems like forever and she can feel her insides melting like candle wax, his touch serving as the igniting flame, diminishing her resolve,_ and and and -_

Either way she is now lying in his bed, clothesless, breathless, light and elated and feeling as if she were slowly slipping out of the blissful, intoxicating effects of amnesia. She listens to the shower water run in the next room, and echoing syntax in the silence. Eventually she shifts up and throws her legs off the bed, peeling the sweat-soaked sheets off her body and stands up. She has to remind herself how to operate her limbs. Her legs feel weak and shaky under her, like her knees are going to give out under the weight. Her head feels heavy and dizzy and a sudden sense of claustrophobia comes over her with no reasoning, walls closing in.

She needs air, desperately; his house is too stuffy, suddenly, and she can still feel a film of perspiration covering her skin, increasing with the abrupt anxiety.

She picks one of his flannel shirts off the floor and wraps it around her, the scratchy material rough and warm against her skin. The dogs shift up and their eyes seem to be scrutinizing, scolding her when she walks into the living room, but she ignores them as well as the gaping hole in the chimney, exiting out onto his porch. She lets the cold air surround her body and listens to the heart of the night, beating with rustling winds in the trees and various animals scurrying in the brush or in branches. The cold bites at her bare legs and she shivers, but doesn't dare go back to the warmth, to him, waiting inside.

Her heart is speeding up again, pounding in her chest like it wants to leap out. An uneasy ache was swelling in her stomach, and the beginnings of tears sting her behind her eyes, and a word flashes in her mind like a glowing red marquee:_ mistake mistake mistake_.

Panic is raging inside her, desperate and helpless and gnawing.

She doesn't make mistakes. Or hasn't, for a long time now, been perfectly obedient to her logic and morals and keen sense of right and wrong. With that long streak of ceaseless conformity, she could've afforded one little mistake. But she'd chosen to make biggest possible one, and malicious hatred was beginning to boil underneath her skin for it.

Just this morning she was merely a concerned friend, walking beside him in the fields and reassuring him that he wasn't broken. Now they had passed the point of no return.

She has her eyes screwed shut and is attempting to regain some control of her frantic breathing when she hears the screen door shut behind her, bare feet pattering against wood. Like a switch, she composes herself, swallowing her shallow breaths as well as her tears, heart freezing in her chest. She turns to him and looks just like her perfectly calm, logical, level - headed self.

"Hey." His wet hair is clinging to his forehead in soaking tendrils.

"Hey," She says, and somehow manages to sound controlled.

"I thought you might've left." His voice is husky and full of timid relief as he steps closer, placing a light hand on her hip, reeling her in. He wasn't aware that the simple touch had her completely, desperately in thrall of him once again.

"No," She says, and before she can think about it she steps closer and leans her head against his chest, and it feels so perfectly organic, like they're melding puzzle pieces. He's startled for a moment before enveloping her in his arms.

They stand like that for a long time, unmoving, though they're both shivering, exposed to the cold. He closes his eyes and rests his head on hers, an unnerving sense of tranquility seeping into him.

It's Alana who breaks the precious contact first, lifting her head but not her eyes or her hands, resting in fists on his chest.

Her expression looks distracted, lost in thought and contemplation. She lingers for a while, saying nothing, an air of distance about her.

"Can you please tell me what you're thinking?" He says after a long beat of silence, not attempting to hide the annoyance from his voice, "I'm empathetic, not telepathic."

He thinks he knows what she'll say next: _we're not good for eachother_ or something along those lines. His heart drops to his stomach and he tenses up, bracing for impact.

What he doesn't expect her to say is this: "I'm thinking...you better not've been too fond of this shirt, as I'm finding it really very comfortable and I haven't decided yet whether or not I'm going to give it back."

He laughs, loud and surprised, the sound echoing sharply into the silent night. A smile slides across Alana's face and she laughs too, but he silences her with a kiss.

...

(_What I said before, about the whole not dating thing -_

_I know._

It's still true, Will.

I know. But -

She doesn't let him finish before offering an unrequested explanation: _Because it's hard to be with someone else when you're so far inside your own head._

He can empathize with that.)

...

In the morning he can still stand to look her in the eyes and he wonders why he ever expected it to go any other way. They sip their seething coffee on his porch like it's a habitual thing, and her eyes trail over the small crack in Will's mug, insipid coffee velvety on her tongue, skin warming in the sunrise, and she could die watching that smile slip onto his face and be happy even in hell.

...

But then-

She leaves and he goes to work and they look at each other over the corpse of some poor unfortunate person with their body desecrated in the most savage of ways, and her eyes were that of a strangers. They're both ashamed that they'd given each other a taste of what they could have in a different world, as different people, if the consequences weren't so dire, and frustrated that that was all they could have. Tragedy is all they can offer each other, and that's bound to end well for nobody. Alana knows that.

...

"Tell me how I can see patients every day and coax them into taking my advice when I don't even take my own? Doesn't that make me a fraud, a hypocrite? How can I do that and not hate myself?" She hates the anger rising in her voice and hates that it sounds like it's directed towards him, when he has nothing to be sorry for and she was really scolding herself.

They're in his classroom, and she's facing him with her arms crossed over her chest as he shuffles at his desk with a pile of papers. The words _hate myself_ pique a sick feeling through Will and he winces. He can't stand being the cause of her pain. That was never what he wanted.

"You can leave, then, if you'd like," he says, tone maddeningly dispassionate, and she knows he doesn't just mean leave the room, he means leave him, leave them, and it stings for a fleeting moment. But the fight has diminished from his voice and she knows he's trying to let her off the hook without hurting either of them further, and she can still hear the masked plead behind the syllables: _please, stay._

But she can't. So she has to explain.

"I can't just...have an affair with you." she says, and the words slice at her throat like she's swallowing daggers.

"You don't have to."

"But that's what it is. That's all it's always going to be...until this changes."

"Until _I_ change." Will's tone is morbid.

"Until you're better."

"I am better, I will be better, if that's what you need -" He reaches for her hand but she snatches it away like his touch burned skin.

"This isn't about what _I_ need. You can't pretend to be stable for me when we both know you're not. You live this contained life with your dogs and your fishing rods and your little house and your whiskey, but then you come back to work and see all this death and the violence and that is _not_ stability. And I wish I could take you away from it but we both know that's not my decision." She heaves a sigh and steps closer, but still doesn't return his touch.

"So, what? You want to just act like the other night never happened?" He scoffed.

"The contrary. I acknowledge what happened, and will continue to. But I will also continue to be insistent that it can't happen again."

When she pulls him into her arms it feels like she's the only thing holding him back from falling over the long, endless void of the precipice.

...

Will hates labels. He's learned so after years of working with detectives and cops and psychologists and everyone of the sort; they pull out terms like _psychopath_ and _sociopath_ and _sadist_ and _narcissist_ and sometimes even names so absurdly vague like crazy and insane like something so complex as the human brain and all its strange conditions could be dumbed down to one simple word.

They play the name game with him, as well, but he's long stopped listening to whatever rubber stamp they decide to place on him on any given day. And his distaste for labels has been transferred to his personal life over the years.

Will and Alana don't label what they are to each other. Everything between them just fell into place like jagged puzzle pieces never meant to fit, and they fell with it, plunging into inevitable darkness.

Will was hyper aware of his lack of normalcy. But he can't help but think how easy it would be to put on that facade with her, and pretend for just a while to be whole enough fit someone beside him in the chaos of his life; pretend like he's worthy of her, pretend that there's a pretense for there to be a _them_ when there's already too much of _him_ for that to be possible.

They don't voice their labels because they don't have one anymore. Dating is out of the question. But they aren't quite friends. They'd past that boundary and there was no way to build it back up.

They definitely don't say the word _affair._

...

There's no question in Will as whether or not to tell Hannibal. He's used to bearing everything to this man, everything dark and twisted inside himself, so really this one little confession is nothing.

Hannibal, of course, advises against further romantic biddings for Alana. Something about her analyzing him and him resenting her for it, but Will doesn't want to listen. He already knows. Painfully, wistfully, he _knows_ all too well.

...

A week after, Alana is in her office shuffling papers into her bag when her phone rings. She's momentarily taken aback when Will's name pops up on the screen, but she answers it without hesitating, which shouldn't worry her as much as it does.

"Hello?" She says into the speaker, and the sure, confident voice that bounces back in her ears sounds nothing like her own.

"Hey," He answers, voice a little shaky, and she can already tell he hasn't planned out what he's going to say next. "Um. I don't really know why I'm calling...we just wrapped up the case, and- do you want to come over? Right now?" Alana can practically feel him wincing at his own words, threaded with low expectation, through the phone.

She freezes with with the phone balanced between her shoulder and her ear, about to pack the last paper in her briefcase, halting her movements. "I don't know if that's a good idea."

His voice suddenly becomes alert and hasty, like he's afraid she'll hang up if he doesn't talk fast enough. "I don't mean anything like- like the other night. Completely platonic, I swear. Have you eaten yet? We could get dinner, if you want." before she can answer he adds quickly, "Can't be too unstable for that, can I?"

"No. No one's too unstable for that." She laughs and then pauses, taking in his proposition, refraining with some difficulty to stifle her own protests already climbing their way up her throat.

She had agreed to at least be his friend. And if she wanted to live up to that label, the least she could do was actually spend time with him when he requested it of her.

"Okay," She finds herself saying, rushing the words out before harsh, keen logic can catch up with them, "I'll be over in half an hour."

...

'Getting dinner' turns out to be ordering chinese food and sitting cross legged on his living room floor, leaning against the front of the couch, amid a sea of takeout cartons and a pack of dogs. The TV is glowing some banal program neither are paying attention to. It's completely lacking in thought or convenience but she finds herself unsurprisingly, perfectly okay with that.

"This is major downgrade, I know," says Will almost apologetically, "since you're so acquainted to Hannibal's cooking."

"Not any more than you are," she reminds him as he bats away the myriad of dogs scrambling around to stick their noses in the cartons for leftovers, "and besides, you can never go wrong with egg rolls."

"Good...because I figured my typical dinner menu of coffee wouldn't be suitable for guests." He chuckles at himself. "Or, more often, whiskey." (Or pills. But that one he doesn't mention.)

"You should eat more."

"Eating requires an appetite."

"You seem to have plenty of appetite for Hannibal's food."

"Hannibal practically forces the food down my throat. It's not like I could refuse, anyway, we both know he'd find that...rude."

She stares at him then, her gaze narrowed and scrutinizing. He can sense her eyes watching him like they could burn into his skin and he asks, "What?"

"Nothing."

For the remainder of the evening they don't talk. They continue to sit on the floor in comfortable silence and the TV plays but it's just background noise because the only thing he watches is her, the way the light dances across the shadows of her face, transfixing him. He wonders why he still has a television at all. He rarely uses it, and watching the empty programs after working on a case all day feels like a scandal, to watch life go on in its oblivious happiness when he knew too much of brutal reality. But he's thankful it's there right now, so they there's no need for speaking and he can appreciate the flickering images throwing colors across her nose and eyes and lips and cheeks. He knows she can feel his eyes boring, soaking in her skin, breathing her in without letting any air pass his lungs and for a long time, she lets him.

...

She realizes she'd fallen asleep when she wakes in the darkness, automatically aware of the absence of the hum and gleam of the television, and even more so of Will's absence. For just a second she opens her eyes, and sees hazily that Will is maneuvering his way around the gobs of takeout cartons on the floor, attempting to clear them up. She closes her eyes and buries her face in the scratchy carpet again, exhausted.

He must've sensed her wakefulness because she can sense him, his body moving closer until he's right beside her, leaning over her curled figure, half-asleep.

"Alana," he murmurs, and gets a groggy moan in response. "It's late."

She shifts slightly then, but goes still after a moment, giving up on her attempt to rouse herself from slumber.

He chuckles. He takes a moment to watch her gentle face and slow, even breaths. He finds himself running his fingers along the length of her arm, and he thinks, for just a moment, she had veered herself subconsciously towards his touch.

"You could stay," he whispers gently, knowing it's a mistake, unable to help himself.

He knows it's a mistake because her eyes snap open, suddenly alert, and she sits up so fast he has to jerk out of her way. _"Will."_

"What kind of person would I be if I let you drive all the way home in the middle of the night?"

"A good, compliant friend."

He sighs deeply. "It doesn't mean- not like the other night. Just lay with me. Just to sleep. Please?" His voice is verging on annoyance, like he's tired of fighting, and laced largely with a vulnerable amount of raw need, and for a moment her heart softens at the fact that he lets her hear it, whether the tone was involuntary or not.

"Laying in a bed. With you." She says slowly. "You know perfectly well what that entails."

"It entails nothing...unless you want it to."

"No, I do not want it to."

"Then it won't."

His fingers were trailing up her arm again in tantalizing movements, sending an erratic jolt up her spine, and for a moment she loses focus on everything but his skin against hers. She hates that he can do that to her, make her float away from her own head like a balloon disappearing into vacant nothingness, sailing far from all sense.

She breaks the silence first with a question, one she didn't even know she was going to ask until it had already passed her lips. "Why'd you really call today?"

His fingers halt, and she thinks she's succeeded in gaining back the control he and sleep and stolen from her. But even in the darkness she can see his smile shrinking back into the shadows of his face, becoming rigid and distant once again and immediately feels sorry for it.

"Is wanting to see you not a valid enough reason?"

"No. I just know it's not the one."

He sighs again and leans away from her, and she watches his dark outline running a hand nervously across his face.

"I don't know," he says finally, "We caught one again today...yelling vulgar things as they shoved him in the police car like always. The bodies were all lined up in the morgue...couldn't shake the feeling that he, as well as them, followed me out of there. Followed me home. And I guess, at the end of the day, I realized the only thing I wanted to see after that was you."

She absorbs his words for an interval of silence, counting her own breaths, coming out shallow and hitching now. After awhile, she says, "Just me? Not even Dr. Lecter?"

He laughs out loud at that. "Does Dr. Lecter seem the type to sit on the floor with takeout, watching shit TV with you?"

She burst out laughing along with him at the absurdity of the image. "No, I suppose not."

Their laughter bounces with harsh noise against the serene silence of the rest of the house, and instinctively he leans his face down closer to hers, easing up again.

"Are they still following you?" She asks once the mirthful sound has died between them.

"No," he half lied, "Now you're here instead."

Acting on impulse, she reaches her hand up to rest it against his cheek, feeling the prickly edges of the stubble along his jaw. "I'm sorry you had a bad day," is all she can think to say.

"If by 'bad' you mean 'worse than normal'...then yes, it was pretty bad."

Saying nothing, she simply shifts up again, and pulls him into her arms.

The second he reciprocates the embrace, she understands. She understands why, even though everything about them has caution tape pulled taut around all pretenses of it, it's worth it. Because she can feel so heavily in her the way he just falls into the embrace like she's drained him, every fiber of his being relaxing against her, his bones becoming putty, his veins flowing blood idly instead of rapidly, his heart beating in a hymn instead of a thunderstorm. She knows how human contact is something he considered unwelcome and uncomfortable. She knows how rare it must be for him to have something so simple as an embrace, and even rarer to retaliate it without hesitation. She marvels for a moment at the fact that he has decided to choose her as one of the scarce few that gets to see behind his walls, even if it's impossible to climb over them just yet.

So when he whispers into her neck about about_ staying tonight, just tonight_ she finds herself, in exhaustion as well as plain rebellion against her own morals, giving him a quiet, blunt Fine.

...

Will is in a fog-shrouded wood, dense with mist. He can't even see his own hand in front of his face, and looking down, his legs are concealed by the gray gloom. He must've lost time again. He can't remember coming here.

Everything is white and so eerily silent that he thinks the world must have dropped dead. He screams his own name, feels the syllables scratching and clawing up his throat, leaving marks like they're made of razor blades. The words don't pass his lips, he can't hear his own voice, and it terrifies him.

And then, noise is all around him, right inside his inner ear and echoing in the trees, encompassing everything. His own heartbeat, pulsing and beating like a drum even though it feels like still, dead weight in his chest. The hooves of a stag, pounding against the dirt floor of the wood, bouncing off the trees, filling every interval of silence between the pulses of his heart. Screams come next, horrible, pained moans without a mouth or face or body to match them, clawing at his ears and demanding to be heard. He whips all around, searching for a source of the sound, but in the cacophony of his heart and hooves and screams, it is impossible to tell. The dim flashlight jerking in his trembling hands serves no comfort from the blanched twilight. Eventually he realizes the fog is screaming, containing human voices in the density, trapping him. The symphony of gruesome sound grows impossibly louder, pushing the boundaries of his hearing until it's just white hot noise and he brings his shaking hands to his ears desperately, searching for relief, and then-

Silence.

Deafening. So much so that he wishes more than anything that the roar would return.

_Will._

A voice is what pulls him about of the reverie, but he keeps his eyes shut. He knows it's just an illusion and he'd rather stay in this odd place between sleep and awake than face the darkness by himself.

_"Will."_ The voice is so close. Hasn't his mind tortured him enough for one day?

"Will!" A hand clutches at him and he jolts up in bed like he's catching himself from a fall, soaked in sweat, manic eyes searching for a monster lurking in the shadows, and then he remembers.

Alana's hands are against him, holding him steady, the cold fingers a therapeutic caress against his own feverish, clammy skin.

He convulses in the tremors and holds her against him before he can even think about the action; if the presence of her beside him wasn't something of such utterly overwhelming comfort he would have been ashamed and blatantly bitter that she had to see him this way.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Alana asks, smoothing his curls back from his face in consoling strokes.

"No." He croaks, loathing the neediness infused in that one innocent syllable.

"Then go back to sleep," her voice is oddly alluring as it surrounds him in the darkness. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

He doesn't quite believe her. But he feels safe in the embrace, and for once he can allow sleep to lull him into unconsciousness and away from the panic.

(_Do you ever dream of me?_ she asks, later, when he's calmed enough to lay back down.

_No,_ he says, letting a strangled noise somewhere between a chuckle and a sob out, _I do not dream of you._

A moment of silence, and then, _I don't know whether to be offended or flattered_.

_flattered,_ he says, too quickly and too angrily,_ flattered, without a doubt_.)

...

But that was a moment of peace that simply would not suffice in reality, and he knew well enough that it never lasted long nor recurred again. The next day he goes to sleep alone, and has no idea how he manages through the night. The gray-skinned girl from the morgue stands at the foot of his bed, in the windows, lingers in the trees. She scolds him for living in his warm skin as her bones crumbled in her own cold shell, scowls at him for being too late, not saving her. Her pleading gaze taints all it touches as it follows his every move, accusatory and pleading eyes screaming, _why you, and not me?_

"I don't know," Will sighs at the empty air.

...

"Being alone comes with a dull ache, does it not?" Hannibal asks.

"I'm as alone as you are."

"We are alone because we are unique."

(Will already knows that.)

...

Freddie Lounds pokes and prods at him and spews out her articles as he's slaving over a myriad of crime scenes and once he wishes she was was the corpse he was stealing delight in killing, but a split second later he almost retches in the dirt at the thought.

...

The killer shatters his victim's mirrors and places the shards inside their dead eyes, shining alive once again with glass, and makes them watch.

Will feels the mirrors press in through his own eyes, behind them, and his skull is suddenly made of them. The maze of mirrors reflects, but whether they reflect himself or them is impossible to tell anymore. They shatter just the same, and the broken pieces are placed behind someone else's eyes, letting him see through them, replacing his body and his mind with that of a killer's until the only thing left is his glass eyes, silent and seeing and defenseless.

He is merely a reflection now.

He catches that one, of course. He catches them all. (Or so he thinks.)

...

Abigail discontinuous her wardrobe of thick scarves and turtlenecks, leaving the scar her father's insanity bore into her bare and exposed. A fine streak of red tainting a pure canvas, madness seeping out of the innocence the wore like a veil to protect her current status of _victim._

Will feels the madness seeping out of that scar as if it were reaching out to meet him, like Eldon Stammet's mushrooms reaching out for precious contact, understanding. He can still see the severed windpipe and exposed but otherwise untarnished arteries. He smiles at her from across the small metal table, averting his gaze quickly, concentrating on the scrabble board in front of them.

Scrabble is a good word to describe his headspace, he thinks.

Will is afraid to look into her eyes. Afraid to see her father lurking in their glazed blue depths, he convinced himself.

Really it was because he was afraid he'd see _her_, transparent.

He stares at that scar impulsively, his eyes refusing to tear away.

_I'm sorry,_ He wants to say.

"Hand me another letter," is what he says instead.

...

The first time Alana enters his dreams she is not alone. There is a long dining table, none other than Hannibal's, and it is placed inappropriately in the middle of a wood, the same one of the mist-dense trees and violent symphony, but it's different this time. Clearer, lighter, less lonely, somehow. The corpse from the morgue appears to be their meal, and that does not alarm Will as much as he would have expected it to. The table is illuminated by clearings in the tall trees above them, throwing sunlight onto the human feast. Will sits at one end of the long table, Hannibal facing him on the opposite side, and Alana and Abigail are sitting left and right of him. Looking at Alana in this reverie comes with a dull indifference compared to what it is to look at her in reality. His feelings for her have been weakened, doled out and equalled by that of his affections for the others.

"Mother?" Says Abigail, shrill and sweet, and somehow it isn't a question. As she says it, she looks at Alana, and it's only appropriate: Alana can't save her, Alana can't _see_. They smile warmly at each other.

"Father?" Says Abigail, directed to both Will and Hannibal. The labels seem perfectly right and natural aimed at all of them from Abigail's lips, and they all beam together.

(It's only much, much later that Will realizes the significance of the names; how much her father, the strange, uneven pieces of him, fit into both her new ones.)

Will wakes up on his couch and the TV is flickering one of those late night soap operas, the ones that are a big mess of who-killed-who and who's-sleeping-with-who and since-when-are-they-long-lost-twins, and he thinks it's appropriate.

...

"I can't tell you anything about Abigail," says Alana plainly, "violation of her privacy as well as the protocols. You know that. How'd you like it if Hannibal starting spewing out your sessions with him to me?"

"I bet _you'd_ love that a whole damn lot, seeing as you already prod _me_ incessantly about my well-being." He glances over to see if she'd cracked, but her expression remains the same, serious and unmoved. He sighs. "Look, I'm _worried_ about her, okay? And there are things I need to know."

"If she's willing to speak to you about anything you can ask her yourself."

...

_Just because you killed my father doesn't mean you get to be him,_ Abigail hisses, and Will would beg to differ.

...

Beverly catches up with him one day as they're walking out of the lab after a particularly exhausting case, running up catch with his fast stride, eager to get out of there like the pace could help him outrun his mind and leave it behind where he left the body on the table.

They exchange polite greets before Beverly gets down to business.

"Okay, hotshot," She says, "Tell me what's up with you and Dr. Bloom." She cocks her head to where Alana was pointedly walking in front of them.

Naturally Will is taken aback, but manages to recover enough to answer: " I -what do you mean?"

She laughs at his stammerings and raises her eyebrows. "I think you know _exactly_ what I mean."

He doesn't answer right away, instead calculating his and Alana's every move and coming to the conclusion that they had acted like nothing but_ normal_. Will hates being prodded about his personal affairs and if it were anyone else asking he'd tell them rudely to leave him alone without a second thought, but he's pretty sure Beverly would laugh and shoot back with an equally snarky comment, anyways.

"How could you tell?" He asks, voice detached and irritated. She raises her eyebrows again. "I'm neither confirming or denying. I just want to know how."

Beverly shrugs. "I don't know...I mean, it's nothing anyone else would notice. You're like two teenagers inching around each other because you have a _crush_. It's ridiculous, actually. And there's the way you look at each other - or, the way you don't. And then, when you do look at her, you manage to maintain eye contact for more than like, five seconds. " She smirks at him.

"Or, maybe, you have too much time on your hands." Says Will without looking at her.

"Whatever," Beverly snorts. "and relax, I'll keep my mouth shut about it. But don't think you can fool me." Will says nothing, but his feet don't take him speed walking ahead of her and she takes that as at least half a good sign. After a long pause, she says; "But maybe you can still fool each other."

...

"Didn't even pass the screening process. Ironic," says Freddie Lounds, voice taunting. She's peering at him with caution tape stripped around her, leaning over the police line and somehow managing to dodge all officers and gather her facts and quotes and photographs, even though Will has already told her, harsh and threatening and brutal, that he'd rather not make her leave. But of course, to no avail. "A vigilante getting their hands dirty for the FBI. _Scandalous._ That what you are, Mr. Graham, a vigilante?"

Will, too distracted even to bat her away, mumbles incoherently about being a criminal profiler.

"My, what I would do to get my hands on _your_ criminal profile," She says, knowing much too surely that one day, she will. Her tone suggests the remark is a playful slap rather than a punch in the gut.

Sensing his discomfort, she moves onto lighter subjects. "So the Ripper rips again," She muses, pertaining to the most recent slayings. "And again, and again. How on _earth_ do you sleep at night?"

Irritation is seething under his skin to the point of bursting, but he knows what she's doing, and he won't give her the satisfaction of seeing him snap. "I don't."

Will turns away.

...

_Countless ancient civilizations cut themselves monthly to release the spirits,_ Will's own voice says, but he's not speaking, _they were doing things right. They sacrificed their wrists and their virgins and their lambs, all for the greater good._

_I am helping you. I am merciful. I am cleansing you of the revulsion infesting the earth, allowing you entrance to somewhere clear and gentle and good. For your own good. For the greater good._

Blood flows crimson, and he swims in it instead of drowning.

He catches that one, too.

...

He doesn't want to see it, but the images come anyways. He can see Alana again, from that first night, his mind refusing to repress those memories from the gruesome memories of someone else, mingling, entangling them.

There's something about the way her muscles contract and tighten and extend beneath her flesh. It's a tantalizing stretch and he can see the skin peeled back, torn open and the beautiful pink and scarlet insides revealed. The curves of her exposed tissue entrance him like great red strokes of paint, a scalpel serving as the brush.

He sees the rise and fall of her chest in steady breaths so unlike his own. Her lungs bloom with air, up and down, up and down, and for just a split second he can imagine flowers sprouting from her ribs instead of wounds.

Flowers, he reminds himself, take a leisurely, graceful pace at their withering.

...

He also catches the one with the totem pole, the poor woman with Cotard's syndrome, and countless others. Hannibal tells him not to find himself with a totem of his own making. He feels more like he's digging and falling into a mass grave, pulling the bodies down to pile upon him.

...

Alana stares out the window, eyes trailing the freshly fallen snow. She'd been sulking in this corner for quite some time, ignoring the throng of guests cluttering Hannibal's house for the dinner party. She's clutching her wine glass so tightly she wonders how the glass hasn't broken skin when she feels a looming presence over her.

"Is it correct to presume it is not the food that is troubling you?" asks Hannibal tersely, sliding next to her to stare out the curtain, his fingers like icy tendrils as they slip onto her shoulder.

She shakes her head and doesn't look at him. "No. It's wonderful, as always. I always wondered why you elect to be a psychiatrist when you could undoubtedly be cooking in the finest restaurants in the world. " A shaky laugh falls from her lips. "But then again, I don't. You want to help people. Like I do. I've always admired that."

Hannibal responds with a conclusion masked meekly by a question. "You're worried about our friend Will."

Her demeanor immediately shifts at the mention of his name. Her face drops, eyebrows knit together and she pirouettes sharply to face him. "Aren't you?"

"Worry is always due where Will is concerned. Though I do try not to let it get in the way of my dinner parties."

"I'm just frustrated...that I can't help him without hurting myself."

"I take it that you are already hurting. Has that served to help him at all?"

"No...I suppose not." She exhales sharply. "You're his psychiatrist. Haven't you seen anything? Doesn't he seem..._off_ to you?"

"Will is always off," says Hannibal tersely, "It's in his nature. Another consequence of his extraordinary gift. Will sees beauty and perception where others see banal darkness. He will always carry a burden with him due to that."

"That burden's getting too much to bear." Alana shakes her head and bites her bottom lip until it bleeds. "I am worried. I thought...we thought, Jack and I- that what he was dealing with was just the aftermath, the side effects of the Hobbs thing, that it could be fixed by something as simple as therapy, in the beginning. After what he went through, the trauma with Abigail on top of the field work, it's impossible for him to come out unscathed. But...now I think it's something more, some underlying cause we're not seeing. It's the nightmares, the hallucinations, along with whatever else I don't know. He fools himself into thinking he can hide it from me, even though we're -" the words fade out and she doesn't bother to continue the sentence. "Jack's got him wrapped up in this illusion that he's a martyr for the greater good, but really he's just _killing_ himself."

She feels her throat cease up with impending tears and suddenly feels ridiculous and rude for breaking down in front of Hannibal, in the middle of a dinner party. She turns and further obscures her face from his view, hiding her now wet eyes.

"You may feel an obligation to fix him, but I insist, Alana, there is no need for personal or professional involvement on your behalf. I've got our situation with Will completely under control."

She raises her eyebrows questioningly before he explains, "I took Will to see a neurologist last week. He underwent brain scans with Dr. Sutcliffe, the one who was murdered?" He waits for Alana to give a nod of recognition before continuing, "We found nothing unusual. Nothing physically wrong with him. I considered it a step forward, though Will was noticeably upset by the fact."

Her eyebrows knit together. "Upset?"

"I suspect he was searching for an answer that wasn't mental illness. He also requested quite pressingly that more tests be conducted."

She snaps awake, alert, a stream of shaky queries now escaping her: "He had brain scans with- with the doctor who was _murdered_? And you didn't find anything? Why didn't he - why didn't_ you_ tell me?"

Hannibal blinks and says plainly, "You are not his psychiatrist."

A sarcastic, incredulous laugh his drawn from her before she can stop it. "No, but I still have a right to know, I'm his -" her cackling is cut off as the contemplates the next word, "friend."

"There is the issue of confidentiality, Dr. Bloom, which we both know you are more than familiar with. Will does not want you to think of him as a patient. He does not want you to fuss about him - apparently, as his psychiatrist, that's my job." He smiles. She lets herself laugh, quietly.

"I kept it from you for Will's sake. Forgive me, Alana." He bowed his head at her as if in shame.

She doesn't acknowledge his attempted apology. "More tests." she says slowly, as if she were tasting the words as they rolled off her tongue, "Then get more tests. Make sure of it. Tell the doctors about the hallucinations, sleepwalking- do whatever you have to do to get to the root of this."

"I assure you we are doing everything we can. I also assure you that you need not fret. I wouldn't want you to worry- you have enough on your plate as it is. Let me take care of it."

Looking over at Hannibal's earnest expression, she feels a pang of guilt. "I'm sorry. I know you're trying. It's just- it's so frustrating to watch him crumble and being able to do nothing about it." She takes a long sip of wine. "Don't think I am ungrateful, I'm not. I'm glad he has you. He feels safe with you, feels safe telling you things- I know he tells you a hell of alot more than he tells me." She brings the glass rim up to her pink lips once more, taking another dragging taste of the crimson drink, seeming to fuel her courage with it as Hannibal observes with glittering eyes until she finally turns to face him. "I'm keeping you from your guests," she says, tone apologetic, "go back to them. I won't have you miss your party on account of me."

"I won't have you miss out all the same."

"I'll be back in just a minute." She realizes his fingers were still on her shoulder when they slide away as he turns to exit.

"And, Hannibal?" she calls just as he's out the door.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

...

"Empathy is my only forte," Will explains to her again. With a dark chuckle, he adds, "that and fixing boat motors."

Alana sets her jaw on edge, darkness flickering in her lucid eyes, and she urges, "Then go fix some boat motors. Get away from this."

He ducks his head, refusing to look at her. "I can't."

"_Can't_ and _won't_ are two different things."

In answer, he only shakes his head.

...

His eyes are half-lidded but the irises are clouded and manic. Underneath, they are bruised with nightmares. The sharp streaks of his bones convey the compulsory purge plaguing him. He is gaunt and gray-faced, paranoid and panicked, beaten-down and exhausted at the same time, and he swallows the pills like candy and wonders if he's praying for them not to notice or hoping that they will.

Alana doesn't.

...

He looks at the writhing girl, oh so unfortunate to have crossed his path on a lonely road, and sees his next meal. This banal creature is of no interest to him. He can _just_ see the fight leaving her eyes. Her screams are like a soft hymn in his ears. Her body is not a body; it is a blank canvas he wants to paint with violence. He wants her screams to claw his ears and her hands to scratch his arms like she has a chance of a fight, wants to taste the sweet bitterness of her insides on his tongue. A phantom scalpel appears and he rips flesh and her screeching ceases, and he feels his mouth watering in delight.

Will doesn't catch that one. (Not yet.)

...

Later he sees Alana's limbs tinted with a light again, sun rise or set Will cannot fathom anymore, and the only thought that comes to mind is: _fresh meat_.

...

He doesn't tell her when he loses time. He doesn't tell her when he hallucinates or what nightmares come to life under his pillow. He doesn't tell her anything. He convinces himself the only outward evidence of his deterioration is the bags under his eyes that have always been there. He purposefully begins keeps his distance so as not to spark any suspicion from her as to his well-being. He knows she will worry and he can't stand her fussing over him like that.

And most of all, even know, he can't stand the prospect of her seeing him as some poor, sick, pitiable thing. He's simultaneously pulling her closer when he needs something cling to and pushing her away when he thinks she may start to see that he _is_ broken, after all.

...

He finds a paper boat on her desk. He runs his fingers over the rough edges of the makeshift sail, feels the small weight of the paper on his palm. His fingers turn under it like pale waves.

"They're going to kill Gideon, aren't they?" she says, the guilt prominent in her voice.

The earnest concern flowing from her snaps Will out of his constant daze because he hates to see her blame herself, and he wants to comfort her, to ease her pain the way she almost always manages to ease his.

"Whatever happens to him has _nothing_ to do with you." He says sternly.

(Later he'll figure out he was wrong again.)

...

He snatches the boat from her desk when she isn't looking. When he gets home, it is crushed and wrinkled and warm from his pocket, and he smooths it out, sharpens the weakened corners of its shape, and rests it on his nightstand next to the melting clock.

...

They stare at Carson's body in the morgue, the Ripper's mutilations on his skin in a perfect replica of Gideon's work. All of them know too well that they are imagining Alana on that table, bare skin bruised and a ghostly pallor, tongue thrust out through her neck in a savage slice. Maybe minus an arm or a few organs.

She's used to him not looking at her for fear of seeing these grotesque illusions. Now none of them do.

...

Will stands outside Alana's house and watches her oblivious silhouette through the window, her figure glowing in the lamplight. She says something to her protective custody and he exits, and she stands the desk, shuffling with papers, unaware of the people just outside. A killer and a would-be savior, though Will doesn't feel like one at all.

He thinks about the little paper boat, still sitting crumbled on his nightstand. He thinks about when he walks his flat fields in the heart of the night, howling all around him, and his little house with its yellow-lit windows looks like a boat on the sea, allowing him a passing sense of safety and security. Alana, now in her own yellow-lit window in the vast, infinite void of darkness behind and beyond her house, reminds him of that. He can almost see the waves curling under her. She is the only light for miles. The only light in the endless darkness, and he can't let his light perish.

A stream of empty platitudes comes from beside Will, but he is barely listening. It was Garrett Jacob Hobbs' words - or was it Abel Gideon? He doesn't know, or care anymore.

Will could feel his (their?) poison seeping into his mind, contaminating him, further intoxicating his already venomous empathy, and the only thing that claws clarity and determination out of him is the words:_ If I killed her…_

The ring of the bullet is a soft echo in his ears as he collapses onto the biting snow.

...

_Pure, beautiful empathy_. She'd used those words once when explaining Will's strange gift to Hannibal, but she can imagine Will now, glaring and scolding at her for attributing the word _beautiful_ to his gruesome headspace.

Now, she stares at him breaking and diminishing on the hospital bed, her land lingering on his, and beautiful seems like a word of the most vicious vulgarity.

...

In the morning she's walking out through the glass doors of the hospital utterly exhausted and drained, when she almost collides with Jack as he's walking in. He sees the fire raging in her eyes and the sleeplessness scrawled under them and impulsively considers fleeing out the way he came, but she corners him. She offers no greeting before diving into a furious query: "When is this going to stop, Jack?"

He has to physically restrain himself from rolling his eyes. The stern statement escapes him in cold, practiced tones, like he'd rehearsed it in front of a mirror. "Will can take care of himself. The way he took down Gideon last night in his condition just proves how strong he is."

"It proves how much he's breaking!"

"I'm not giving up on him yet. And neither should you."

"I'm not asking you to give up, I'm asking you to give in. Goddamnit, Jack, if you won't let him quit then at least take away his badge, make him take a break -_ something_!"

"Can we not do this here?" Jack hisses, eyes darting at the passersby.

"I suspect you won't listen anywhere, so don't even bother," she says, storming out.

...

"Georgia Madchen did not kill herself." Will is pacing furiously in the living room of his house, Alana standing still and facing him with her arms crossed, listening to his erratic speech. "She was murdered by whoever killed Dr. Sutcliffe...by whoever killed the Marissa Shore and Cassie Boyle, and all the others..."

"You said Nick Boyle was the copycat." Alana says slowly, "Nick Boyle is dead."

He shook his head. "I changed my mind. Actually, the evidence changed it."

"What changed?"

"Georgia told me she saw someone else there, the night Dr. Sutcliffe was murdered, and I know it was the Copycat, and he killed her because she saw him and she remembered. He, whoever he is, wanted to _copy_ how Georgia killed her friend, just the way he copied Hobbs' murders with Marissa Shore and Cassie Boyle..."

"Those cases had no connection before."

"I didn't think they had any connection before, I wasn't thinking straight," he continues to pace, straining to place something calm in his voice and failing, "I didn't _see_, but now it's finally clear, I am finally thinking clearly..."

"Are you?" Says Alana quietly, narrowing her gaze at him. He freezes, darkness flickering in his eyes, and before he can speak she asks, "_Why_, again, did you check out of the hospital?"

He looks away from her, beginning again with his pacing. "The fever went down. There's murders that aren't solving themselves. Take your pick."

"You haven't been home in days, Will," begins Alana gently, "and you just got back from the hospital after having a _seizure_, may I remind you. I think you should sleep on all this...mull it over in the morning. You're making enormous jumps right now, ones you still can't fully explain-"

"Have you been listening to anything I've said?" He turns to wheel towards her furiously. "I know now, everything is finally making sense I don't know why you can't see that."

"I didn't say I couldn't see it. I know there are holes in the cases we can't justify yet. I just think you need to relax...you've had a hectic few days- hectic few _months_, if we're being honest- You've got to give yourself a rest."

"Couldn't rest if I tried. And even when I do, it's just...brief intervals of sleep primarily laced with nightmares."

She pauses, contemplating, and then asks, "Have you ever thought of taking sleeping medications?"

He freezes again and shoots her a cold glance. "Jack wouldn't allow it. Might get in the way of the _'thing'_ I do."

"Fuck Jack. You can't let him dictate your life, your _health-"_

"I am not letting Jack do anything, I had a chance to quit and I couldn't take it. But it doesn't matter anymore, I can catch him now, I'm so close-"

"You're _too_ close."

Will had begun his pacing again but now, abruptly, he stopped, turning slowly to face her. He looked as though he was just remembering who he was speaking to; that he wasn't in Hannibal's office, consulting on the case with him as always, that it was in fact _Alana_ listening to his daft new theories. Probably growing increasingly wary of the state of his health by the moment. Probably thinking he was just as crazy as he'd felt before.

"You don't believe me. " Says Will finally, slowly, shaking his head and letting out a deranged cackle. "I should've known."

"I didn't say that."

"You don't have to."

A pregnant silence ensues as they soak each other in, Alana's face contorted in concern, Will's turning darker and maniacal by the minute. The wordless noise between them begins to be too much to bear, and it's Alana who breaks it with a hesitant confession. "Hannibal told me about the brain scans."

Will's eyes dart into her and flash with incredulous, enraged shock. "He- he did what?'

Alana sucks in a breath. "Don't be angry with him. He was doing a good thing in notifying me. I have a right to know."

"He had _no right_ to-"

"He had every right to. And Will, you can't just...go on feigning stability for my sake or anyone else's. I want to help you, but I can't do that if you won't help yourself."

"Really? Because I thought I wasn't your goddamn patient."

"You're not. You're a friend, and it's only natural for friends to be concerned about other friends...look, he also told me you asked for more tests, which I more than agree with. So get the other tests, and maybe we can get some answers..." her voice was fading from its attempt to sound reassuring, disappearing into hopelessness.

"'_We'_?" Will scoffs, "There is no 'we'. It's always just been me, and it always will be, and you made sure of it, after that night, didn't you? You walked away. And you know what I think? I think it's because you feel sorry for yourself, because you went against your rules and let it happen, didn't stop me. That why you stick around, then, because of your petty sympathy for me? Then you're just like everyone else, aren't you?" he spat. "Well then your pity and your guilt is misplaced, because I don't want it, nor do I need it."

Even as he says the words he can taste the irony in them, because in fact she is just the opposite of everyone else; she sees the light in him where others see nothing but gloom.

Alana sets her mouth in a hard, defiant line. "You know that's not true," she says, unmoved, but Will ignores her and continues to inch dangerously closer.

"And if he told you about the tests..." snarls Will languidly, lowly, "then he also told you about the results, didn't he?"

His lazy footsteps were taking him right into her until he was close enough that their were breathing in each other's air, but she didn't back away. She stood frozen, petrified, and an icy jolt ran up her spine.

"Nothing physically wrong," his whisper is cruel. "and we both know what_ that_ means, don't we?"

She remembers herself and straightens up, unafraid, looking into his deranged eyes. She immediately jumps into psychiatrist mode, despite her vows to not turn on that switch for him. "It's an implication of mental illness. But there's so much variety to that, it could be anything from anxiety or mood disorders, personality and psychotic disorders being the worst-case scenario-"

Will laughs, harsh and vicious and mocking. "Now you're just being naive. Does anxiety or mood disorders cause hallucinations? Losing time? Sleepwalking, the seizure, _I don't even know who I am_..."

he was calling out his symptoms like a checklist, not caring anymore what she thought of him- he'd carelessly ceased his facade of sanity a long time ago. He shook his head in erratic jerks. "I didn't know who I was...thought I didn't. But now...I understand. Now...I'm them." He spoke the words slowly, as if realizing the truth of them as they spilled out.

"No," says Alana, and he jumps, her presence almost slipping his mind, "You're you. And this isn't you."

"This is _exactly_ me." he growls.

In the swirling vertigo of his mind's eye, suddenly images of of Georgia Machen in her oxygen prison and her mother at the glass table in the FBI pierce Will's retinas and ears. He weighs their words, the insufferable, crushing truth of them. It doesn't matter what brain scans or blood tests he underwent next, it doesn't matter how long he'd stay in a white, insultingly sterile hospital room with doctors poking a prodding, seeking an answer to his madness. A rubber stamp. They would never find it, they would never label his psyche, bred in blood and blades, with a proper label; he hates labels. They never quite fit.

Finding the source wouldn't cure him, anyways. Find the source meant nothing. Knowing was just as ineffective as not. The madness was absorbed in his bones, flowed through his veins with intoxicating force, infesting his brain like a parasite, and _knowing_ was so, so far from _curing._ He knew he could not be cured of himself. The only way to perish his madness was to perish everything else he is right alongside it.

It was all blind hope shifting into clear hopelessness; finding the Copycat wouldn't end it, either. There would always be another case, another life to save, and he could see no end except in death.

It hits him that this, them, never was something he was meant to have and keep. It wasn't about waiting it out, alluding to themselves into thinking that someday things were going to change. It was not about finding solutions; it's about managing expectations. And Alana is something he never should've expected to have.

He wants her to walk away like she should, and he wants to let her. But he can see the concern and apprehension in the lines forming on her forehead, in the depths of her eyes, the folds of her arms. Even now, the need for her to see him as something other than broken is overwhelming. Even now, he feels that pang of selfishness he had when he kissed her; the desire to be closer, to make her stay, to allow himself that indulgence.

He felt detached, cold, and it fueled him the way fear had before, and as he strides towards her with unwavering purpose and crushes his lips to hers, all the timidity and vulnerability and inhibitions he had the first time were forgotten.

It's a shock, but she responds with automatic pusillanimous fervency as he kisses her, savage and deep. After a moment she pulls back in reluctance, stopping him. She hadn't even been aware that her hands were snaked around his neck, her lips swollen, and he lowers his eyes when she opens hers slowly, and they are soft and clouded but still glittering with earnesty.

She tries so hard to think of a resolve but comes up impractically blank. She'd crossed the line with him a long time ago, and she was too involved, so involved that she knew that nothing now could make the pain any more bearable in the end, and she felt so utterly helpless and defeated and really, what was the _point_ anymore?

"Please look at me." Every syllable is ingrained with an emotion he can't quite place; one that surpasses longing or sadness or desperation or any of the words he can come up with to match their plight.

He raises his eyes taking in the hurt and confliction glistening in them and, though it takes a wistful, aching pain for her to do so, she pulls her lips back up to his.

Whether the action was out of desperation or sheer wanting or if she was finally surrendering, Will did not know, but he responds with a rough enthusiasm to match her own and it's both a reciprocation and a resistance, a push and a pull, their lips driving towards each other with such urgency that it's almost enough to drive them away.

The revelation comes to Will that it is _Alana_ kissing_ him_, kissing him like it would make her words of unbrokenness ring true, like he could find a scrap of himself hidden inside her and crawl his way back to himself. Now it was _him_ that was reciprocating _her_ advances. He considers pushing her away, wrenching himself from her grasp, giving her a taste of her own medicine. He could refuse it, if he wanted to. (He doesn't.)

It's a surprise to him that she lets him grab her hips and steer her over to the couch, pushing her roughly down onto it, pinning her under him. He expects her to refuse again, even as his lips devoured hers ruthlessly and as his fingers fumble to shuck her coat away from her shoulders and his hands splay under her clothes, testing the boundaries, finding that apparently she's torn them all down. Because she doesn't stop him; she urges him on with a desperate vigor matching his own.

And still the weary misery was clawing at him, hating himself because it had to be this way, because it is _his fault_ he couldn't give her something simple and stable and strong. With aching wistfulness he wishes it wasn't like this, that he could have her, _really_ have her instead of serving this fleeting ache to make up for the fact that he can't have her in entirety.

Because; he must first have a gauge of himself to even let the thought cross his mind of having someone else.

But; the thought crosses his mind anyways, now, before, every time his eyes rest on her.

_Someday_ had always been a sweet unspoken promise between them in the spaces between their words but never needing confirmation, and that was what had always kept him restrained. But now someday was quite possibly never. There was no end to the madness, no beginning where sense could take over.

He really _was_ going to die a lonely diesel in a boatyard, living a desolate existence in a trailer with his dogs. (Or, better yet, maybe he'd die sooner- on the field, on another case. There was a strange sort of relief in knowing the senseless insanity could end where it started.) That's what he'd always planned on, before. Before he had the deceitful sense that redemption and salvation was an attainable option. Brutal reality was invading his mind again.

So this was it, then. This was all the time he- they - would ever have.

(But he is angry, so angry, and he can't bring himself to savor the fleeting moment like he should, because he's too aware that when it's over they will be too; he's angry and lost and hurt and so he fucks her fast and hard and punishing right on the couch, and his lascivious hands trail over her body and he's afraid that with the lightest touch she will come up bruised under his fingers, but the spiraling carnal desire seeping in his bones does not allow him to cease. An earthquake, an explosion is ticking away in her and when the bombs go off and the earth under her quivers she arches her spine into him, ribcage straining taut against her skin, and his name escapes her lips and it's a lightning bolt struck in the fog and the storm raging in his mind and in his body, and it undoes him almost simultaneously. His bones have diminished and he is all pumping blood and the dark sparks behind his eyelids. He collapses against her, drained, when it's over, and she trembles and shivers in the aftershocks and he wants to clutch her like this forever and forget about crime scenes that had unfolded on her body, burning through his retinas and onto her skin while he had to remind himself that she writhed in pleasure, not pain, underneath him.)

In the dark quiet of the house, permeated with their harsh, erratic breathing, Will imagines the world without him in it. He sees Beverly and Price and Zeller and the rest of the team in shared silence over his lifeless body on the morgue table. He sees Jack at his desk, face buried in his hands, reliving the grief of Miriam's loss. He sees Hannibal sitting across from Will's empty seat at the time of their sessions. He sees Alana at an alter in a pale wedding dress, marrying someone deserving. He sees Abigail away at college, a genuine smile balancing out the morbidity of the faded scar at her neck, beaming in the light of a new life. He sees his own father, the one who hadn't bothered to call in years, smoothing a hand over the wooden cover of his coffin.

The images bring a strange kind of serenity. He can imagine being other things instead of himself, instead of a _person_, like the winds that whisper across the fields or the air in Alana's lungs. Things that are silent and sure and indestructible, bringing nothing but evanescent life.

After a while Alana cranes her neck ever so slightly and sees, oddly enough, the gaping hole in the chimney, now boarded up. The sight of it gives her a feeling like a hole has been gorged inside her match it. She stares at the dark cavity against the green of the walls and almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Eventually she seems to remember herself and detaches her body from Will's clinging one, untangling her limbs from his, and immediately he feels the coldness of her absence and suddenly the emptiness and loneliness is unbearably prominent again.

It was only then that she looks down and sees his bleak and shadowed face, bruised eyes, sharp bones starved of nourishment, like every fear and nightmare and hallucination was scrawled carelessly on his skin. She looks down at the ivory skin of her own collarbones and the purple marks his mouth left there remind her of bruises.

"Will…" she brushes her fingertips against his transparent ribcage, voice imbued with pain.

"I'm fine," he snaps harshly, jerking away from her touch, immediately feeling guilty for it.

There are so many things he wants to tell her, a myriad of apologies and confessions, but he can't find the words; he can only find three. Three little words that he could present to her, everything he feels gift wrapped in a simple, strange little phrase.

"Alana, I-"

She must have sensed what was coming, and he had no idea how she could because he wasn't even aware of it. She shuts her eyes tight, like she's blocking out tears, and when she speaks her voice is strangled and stripped deliberately of emotion. "Please don't say anything you wouldn't say if I had walked out that night."

He sews his mouth shut lest they come spilling out anyways. Instead he says, "I'm sorry."

When she leaves, her goodbye feels like that of permanence.

...

Will flies to Minnesota with Abigail the next day, sinking further into his nightmares and hallucinations and the only thought that pierces his mind is Abigail's name like a repetitive hymn, possessing him and encompassing everything else. Alana buries herself in work all day and pretends she isn't concerned. Will manages to convince himself that he's finally managed to drive her away, that she's relieved to not have the burden of him on her shoulders.

...

But Alana can't pretend she isn't concerned, when Will's name is her own echoing hymn, and she remembers his words, Will's as well as Hannibal's like a tape on a loop, flashing phrases across her eyes: _nightmares, hallucinations, losing time, brain scans_...until she can almost _taste_ a diagnosis on the tip of her tongue-

but then Jack calls her into his office, and it's fair to say she was not prepared for what comes out of his mouth next.

(A sound echos in her head that is her heartstrings being severed by the millions: _snip, snip, snip.)_

...

They say Abigail's blood was blanketed ghostly on the floor of the kitchen, like she was always meant to die on that floor. They say Will raised his gun and pointed it at Hannibal's head, intention murderous. They say he whispered _see?_ as went down, blood smearing the cabinets.

...

_See?_ voices beckon at her, and she finally understands why that one syllable followed Will like his own shadow for so long.

_See?_ they whisper, but don't speak the why didn't you slipping from the beginning of a sentence that never was. The cacophony grows louder as she approaches the long corridor, until she reaches the last cell on the left -

_See_, the man in the prison jumpsuit and hollow eyes says in a silent scream, and this time, it isn't a question.

...

In the morning, she wakes to the feeling of sunlight seeping through her eyelids, a wind wafting through the open window and a frigid breeze rustling the sheets ever so slightly. Even before she opens her eyes she can feel him so distinctly next to her, and she keeps them shut.

Will is already awake and quietly observing her, make-up free, sleep-mussed hair and gentle face in the yellow, sleepy morning light, bright and beaming and beautiful. It is not often he allows himself to look at beautiful things that haven't been destroyed by the savagery of man, and even rarer that he gets to touch. So his fingers trail along her arms, contours of her spine, sweet-smelling hair, attempting to enlighten himself again with the strange, unfamiliar feeling of having someone vital and warm and breathing next to him. He almost wishes she was still oblivious to his exploration, but he could see her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks, the first sign of wakefulness.

On impulse he pushes the hair away from her face, resting his forehead against hers. He brushes his lips to hers ever so slightly in a chaste peck. He has to familiarize himself with that again, too.

Alana is not a morning person so she squirms at the touch, but still does not open her eyes.

"If this is what you consider platonic, I don't even want to _know_ what you and Jack do when you're alone." she says, tiredness still conspicuous in her voice.

He laughs. It felt good to laugh, to _really_ laugh- he hadn't done much of it in months, and he forgot how effortless the feeling was. "Very funny. Good thing Jack's married then. I would never dream of being a homewrecker." He shifts onto his back, staring at the ceiling, while she remained groggy and unmoving next to him. "Speaking of Jack, I'm praying he won't call anytime soon, because I don't think I'd have the willpower to get up."

When, finally, she does open her eyes, the first thing she sees is his face so close to hers again that it hurts make her eyes focus on his features. The second thing she sees is light throwing the pattern of the blinds over them, and the third thing she sees almost makes her jump with the shock of it, and she has no idea how she didn't see it before.

At the sight of her concerned wide eyes laid on the lumpy scar that tarnished his shoulder, he explains the stabbing when he was a cop as she trails her fingers tenderly over it. She doesn't ask but he feels the need to say it anyway, and there's a sort of relief in confessing to someone who wasn't stoic, prim and proper Dr. Lecter.

(Will remembers confessing to him that the stabbing was the worst he'd thought it could get before that fateful day when he stumbled into Hobbs' kitchen, and Hannibal's words in response to his declaration echo in his mind: _Is it such a shock to discover that watching the life dissolve from someone else is truly so much worse than experiencing anything close to it yourself?_

Yes, Will thinks now. Yes, it is.)

He looks more tranquil than Alana had ever seen him before, strangely small and vulnerable without a gun at his belt and a sad scowl on his face. For a moment it scares her, his placid look at that moment, like he's fading away.

(It's so rare he has a moment like this, carefree and easy, and Will feels entirely like someone else, someone normal and happy that didn't drown in imaginary blood in these very sheets last night.

Actually, if he thinks about it, he feels entirely like himself; a younger version of himself, maybe, an optimistic one that doesn't have scars tainting his mind, covering all pretense of normality. Or maybe this was his older self, decaying yet peaceful, and his imagination was giving him this peek into the future to tease him, dangling his longings in his face and snatching them away before he could reach out to grasp.)

He doesn't want to talk about the torments of his past or the ones dripping now into his present, so he asks about the necklace she wears with the little starfish hanging on the chain, sliding his fingers over the smooth charm laying against her chest. (_I've never even seen you without it._ _You never take it off, he says,_ and knows this because he saw it last night in the dark and he saw it that other night, too, when she was bare of everything else, and it was gleaming gold like a beacon in blackness.)

She expresses her fondness for the sea and how she fell in love after a family vacation when she was a kid, and how she'd planned to live on a beach up until adulthood, but had to abandon the sea for Georgetown and the BAU and offers entirely impossible to turn down.

_(I wasn't too devastated, I knew I was entertaining a childish dream. I can live on a beach when I'm retired and withering,_ she says, _but this job...helping people the way we do...that's a once in a lifetime opportunity._

But he can still taste the bitter, delicious salt on her skin and see the sunlight reflecting a palette of reds and golds and oranges in her hair, and for a moment the curtains billowing at the window look like slow, swaying palm trees and the fluttering sheets over them look like drifting waves and everything in that moment is an iridescent rush of feeling and color and sound and _isn't that what it is to be alive?_)

He sees dull and paling marks on her arms and legs, none of them severe, mostly a mess of skim marks and scarred scabs (_Brothers,_ she explains, being the youngest, _I was the designated punching bag_. She laughs but there's a distant look in her eyes).

He tells her about his childhood and the boatyards he followed his father to and from, how they were poor, how he was lonely. How he was always a stranger, struggling to make friends. (_I suppose I have a half-buried grudge against the rich_).

She tells him about her struggle with a hot temper, taking years to gain control of; the one that still shone through occasionally when Jack or Hannibal were being particularly difficult (_I suppose I have a half-buried grudge against_ everyone).

She asks about his dogs and his fishing and slowly she watches his eyes come alive, recalling the few serene moments he has for himself in the constant chaos of his life. He tells her about each dog, how they were named and how they were rescued. He tells her eagerly about the lures and the lake he fishes at, and through his words she can feel the quiet contentment of the place.

(_I was going to teach Abigail to fish, but I advised against it, he says quietly, because of...you know. And after a moment's pause: I could teach you someday….if you'd like._

Alana grins.

Someday looms in the air between them like a blanket of fog, and they cling to that sliver of hope like they wish they could cling to each other.

_Someday_.)


End file.
